Audiophiles know that tweaking a system can
improve its sound, but few of us actually exercise this knowledge to realize the full
potential of our systems. A trio of audiophiles believed that tweaking their system would
make huge improvements and, unlike most of us, they pushed their system to its very
limits.

Back in the early 1980s, three guys in Austin,
Texas -- Dave Draudt, Ralph Thorp, and Stan Goudge -- met one another. Dave was the
proprietor of a hi-fi store where Ralph hung out, and Stan was a speaker designer who was
also Ralphs friend. They discovered that they shared a love of music and audio, and,
even more important, they had a common analytical approach to listening and evaluating
audio systems. So they agreed to build a shared system at Daves home, using a set of
speakers that Stan built. They all brought different skills to the venture. Dave had
extensive experience with electronic equipment and electrical work. Ralph was a master
machinist who also had a superior ear for tuning an audio system. Stan was a talented
loudspeaker designer and woodworker with extensive experience in electronic repair.

They built their system over the course of 20
years, focusing as much on tweaking it and its environment as on equipment upgrades.
Finally, like many audiophiles, their interests turned elsewhere, and for six years they
abandoned their quest for audio perfection and drifted apart. However, the audio bug was
not dead, only dormant, and about five years ago, they rekindled their friendship and
started a new system, this one at Ralphs home. Like the original system, their
current setup is built around equipment that sounds very good but is not ultra expensive.
Much of their system-building effort has focused on tweaking -- the room, the power
feeding the electronics, and the equipment itself. Their system is a monument to
audiophile ingenuity, and it sounds quite remarkable.

To start, Ralph chose the best, most
natural-sounding speakers he could afford -- Aerial LR-5s -- and six months later he
acquired a pair of matching Aerial SW-12 powered subwoofers, which are remote
controllable. About the systems source and electronics, Dave recounts:

We had listened to a lot of equipment over the
years and knew the type of sound we wanted: rich, natural, sweet, solid, powerful,
detailed (without being merely analytical). Equipment that reveals the soul and emotion of
the artist. A sound that is engaging and magical. Most equipment we hear does not come
close to sounding like this. We were fortunate to meet Brian Kurtz, proprietor of Sound
Mind Audio in Austin, Texas, and he helped us find a line of equipment dedicated to the
artistry in music. All three of the electronics are from Mutine, a French and Canadian
distributorship headed by Pascal Ravach, a man dedicated to bringing the most truly
musical equipment to the people. We found the equipment we have to be the most magically
musical equipment we had heard at attainable prices (about $17,000 total for all three
components).

The components they chose consisted of a Lecteur
L4.2 CD player used as a transport, an Audiomat Maestro DAC, and an Audiomat Opéra
integrated amp. These components would form a terrific system that most of us would be
tickled to own. Cabling consisted of a Silver Audiotech digital cable, TG Audio BCM1
silver interconnects and power cords, and two pairs of MIT CVT speaker cables.

But choosing the components was just a starting
point. Next, it was time to start an ongoing series of tweaks that would push the speakers
and electronics into a new sonic realm.

Power conditioning

The view behind the listening seat.

Extreme chassis damping.

Not even the ceiling fan escapes damping.

Many audiophiles use some sort of
power-conditioning device to provide clean power to their systems, but the Austin trio
felt that commercial products didnt go nearly far enough. They started at the power
meter, running three 85' lengths of 00 AWG wire to a distribution box with five
magnetic/hydraulic circuit breakers. These are better than typical circuit breakers, which
depend on heating up to break the circuit. From there, five double runs of 10 AWG wire
route the power to a box behind the house, which holds five SOLA 2kVA constant-voltage
transformers.

Why five? Well there are five components:
integrated amp, DAC, CD player and two powered subwoofers, each of which gets its own
isolation transformer. These transformers are massive, making most audiophile power
conditioners look like toys. From the transformers, the power is conducted into the
listening room via five 15' runs of single 10 AWG wire, which Stan has meticulously wound.
Inside the listening room, five SK Research Audio non-current-limiting AC line filters are
used to filter out any residual power anomalies. Needless to say, this fanatical approach
to power conditioning assures that each component has a virtually unlimited supply of the
purest power possible.

Room treatments

When you enter the listening room, you have to
negotiate a forest of homemade sound columns -- 49 of them to be exact. These tube traps
are placed on the side walls and back wall -- everywhere except between the speakers.
Well, there are a couple there too. Not satisfied with commercial tube traps, Dave, Ralph
and Stan elected to build their own, which afforded better tuning options. Their tube
traps come in various sizes: 33 are 6" in diameter by 3' high; eight are
11" in diameter by 3' high; six are 16" in diameter by 3' high; and two
are 6" in diameter by 14" high. Heavy wool curtains damp the walls. Even
the blades of the ceiling fan are damped -- four down pillows are strapped to them. Lots
of felt padding is used, including pieces cut to fit on the front panel of the Aerial LR-5
speakers to damp reflections from the speaker cabinet. Ten yards of muslin cotton on the
floor damp reflections from that surface.

Vibration control

The treatments described so far assure power
problems and room acoustics are addressed. The Austin trio also addressed vibration
control. One of the first items that caught my eye was the Thorp Audio Group (TAG)
stainless-steel cones under several components. Made by Ralph from one of the hardest
alloys of stainless steel, these massive cones weigh in at four pounds each. Two sets of
TAG Classic cones and 28 sets of TAG 1 cones are used throughout the system -- each set
consists of three cones. The points of these cones are quite sharp, to couple vibration
into the underlying surface. Interested? Check out Ralphs website: www.thorpaudiogroup.com.

What also caught my eye were the many SK Research
Audio laminated wood damping blocks that Stan contributed to the system. The SK blocks go
under, on top of, and beside components to damp vibration that would color the sound.
Other SK Research Audio products included a device that damped vibration in the front
panel of the amplifier, and a doughnut-shaped device that fit over the volume knob and
damped vibration there.

Unlike many vibration-damping devices, the SK
Research products are tunable, so you can match them to specific components. Their purpose
is to damp musically harmful vibrations in a component without damaging musical
information -- a tall order. About his products, Stan says:

"Basically the shelves and blocks damp a
wide range of frequencies, up to 20dB reduction. Only a narrow range is not damped; this
may seem a compromise, but in my view, after experiments with dozens of prototypes,
this narrow unaffected range may be the key to the musical enhancement. It's impossible to
have a material that is completely free from resonance, so the blocks and shelves have a
musical resonance, unlike some of the very expensive granite-based designs. The energy has
to go somewhere, so shift it to a narrow area where it sounds best."

Other tweaks include eight VPI bricks (including
two strapped to the transformers of the integrated amplifier), a VPI isolation table, a
modified maple butcher block under the DAC, and dozens of different-sized pieces of
industrial vibration-damping material by SIMMS. Six clay flower pots raise the speaker
cables off floor.

The sound

So after all this development effort, how does
this unconventional-looking system sound? Id use the word awesome if it
hadnt been rendered meaningless by overuse.

Frequency extension goes from earth-shaking bass
to delicate, detailed, not-at-all-peaky highs. The midrange is smooth and very
transparent. Soundstaging is phenomenal, creating an almost holographic image in front of
the listener. Ive only heard soundstaging as palpable from speakers in the $40,000
price range driven by insanely expensive electronics. The Austin system easily spans the
full dynamic range -- from barely audible to ear-damaging levels.

I visited and listened a few times. The second
visit was during a period of change, when an updated SK Research non-current-limiting AC
filter and a new digital cable, a Stealth Audio Varidig Sextet, were being integrated into
the system. I could tell that the frequency balance of the system was not quite as flat as
on my original visit, and Dave explained they were still tuning the system to restore a
slight high-frequency roll-off.

On my third visit, I got a demonstration of the
systems ability to do bass. Dave played some tracks that left the impression that
the system's low frequencies could liquefy internal organs. He claimed that if you stand
in the driveway of Ralphs home, you can feel the vibrations in the concrete, but I
passed on that demonstration. I played one of my favorite CDs, La Folia, with
performances by Jordi Savall and associates [AliaVox AV9805]. On the first cut,
"Folia: RodrigoMartinez," the bass drum went far lower than Ive
ever heard, even on the $89,500 Rockport Altair speakers at CES. Thats deep.

At first, I thought the highs were still a bit
recessed. When we played The Tallis Scholars performance of Allegris
"Miserere" from their Miserere CD [Gimmell 454 939-2], I was at first not
totally impressed with the depiction of depth. Then Dave revealed that we were listening
to a set of prototype interconnects and offered to change them. When he did, the high
frequencies soared, and the depth became much better defined. The prototype interconnects
displayed more bass and midrange detail, however. I recount this event to illustrate how
transparent the system is to any changes. The effect of swapping interconnects was obvious
and unambiguous. As you can probably deduce, the current focus for improvement is
interconnects, and several companies are working on new cables for the system.

If youve stayed with me this far, you may
be wondering how some of the products Ive mentioned would work in your system. I
wonder the same thing, and I hope to have an opportunity to evaluate some of the more
portable and domestically acceptable devices soon.

Regrettably, Ralph has experienced some serious
illnesses. He commented that sometimes, working on the shared system was a major incentive
to keep going. So when we sometime comment that the audio hobby isnt a life-or-death
matter, maybe sometimes it is.

While many audiophiles may take a few steps
toward tweaking their systems, the Austin threesome's system shows how far knowledgeable
tweaks, rigorously analyzed, can take things. While the basic equipment is very
respectable, the room treatments, power conditioning, and vibration-control measures have
made this system the equal of any Ive heard short of some that cost in the middle
six digits. While similar tweaking would under no conceivable circumstances be acceptable
in a typical domestic situation, its still fascinating to hear just how far it can
take a system.